Episode 32: Adapting to organisational growth with Brad Archer

Imagine being a micro agency of nine people with a great ambition to make a real difference in addressing climate change for Australians. Then you get the green light to rapidly grow six times your size, budget, and remit. Exciting? Perhaps. Uncertain? Definitely. Brad Archer, Chief Executive Officer of the Climate Change Authority, joins us to discuss leading through significant and rapid growth, exploring the opportunities, challenges, and achievements it brings in our latest episode.

Listen to episode thirty-two:

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About this episode:

This episode offers an honest reflection on leading and managing rapid organisational change, highlighting some of the challenges that arose from significant growth in recruiting a new workforce that had to come together quickly to start delivering on an expanded remit of work.

The Climate Change Authority has undergone a significant period of growth over the past few years. From a micro agency of just nine people to an agency of sixty-five in just 18 months, it must have felt like establishing a new organisation, and by many measures, it was.

As CEO, Brad reflects on the critical aspects of managing at this time, which included having a clear understanding of what their priorities were, working towards a shared vision, and the vital role that communication played, especially when it came to roles and expectations.  He also shares that as a leader, he had to be cognisant of not only establishing new teams, enterprise agreements, and work program agendas, but he also needed to ensure his organisation was delivering its remit to the Australian government at the same time it was coming together.

He also explains that when you have a lot of ‘new’ in terms of people, roles, and work, it can lead to uncertainty and hesitation among your workforce. He goes onto to share ways that they have addressed that through a matrix management style to encourage cross team collaboration, and adopting an explicit ‘daisy’ decision-making framework that clearly define roles in terms of who’s leading, who’s contributing, who needs to be consulted, and who needs to be aware of what’s happening.

We also touch on organisational culture and how, with a new workforce, this involves managing the different expectations that people bring into the organisation and establishing a vision of what culture they want to create. Brad also shares how having a deep commitment to addressing climate change, with the goal of achieving better outcomes for Australians, has been a unifying element among his staff, forming an excellent foundation for their organisation's culture.

Find out more about this Trailblazer:

Brad Archer

Chief Executive Officer

Climate Change Authority

Brad is the Chief Executive Officer of the federal government’s Climate Change Authority, a role he commenced in late 2018. The Authority provides expert, independent advice to the government on Australia’s climate change targets and policies. Brad has extensive experience advising on climate change, renewable energy and energy market issues. Prior to his current role he worked in the climate change department, where he was responsible for clean energy innovation, Australia’s greenhouse gas inventory, and international climate change policy, and led negotiations on the first federal offshore wind farm exploration licence in Australia. He also has extensive experience working in the Australian Treasury, which he joined in 1991. Brad has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) and a Master of Information Management.

Tune in next week as we speak to a new trailblazer in another episode in our series on Thriving in Uncertainty.